Go Home Different

          It was probably over ten years ago now that I was signing a graduation card for someone and I thought to myself what a nice touch it would be to create my own graduation cards with my words of wisdom, philosophies of life, inside to share! I mean, what graduate wouldn't want to hear the kernels of truth that I have gleaned over the many years of my life! And I thought perhaps when I am older, I will decide on a series of statements that comprised my philosophy of life.

            The next thought that came to me was that I was already old and I should stop being lazy and come up with the words of wisdom that I allegedly already live by.

            So I thought and thought. Eventually I came up with six statements. And it surprised me to realize that of the six, one of them was a common phrase, one is something original by me that was added long after the first five were made into the list, two are statements of my Dad, and two are from the associate pastor of the church the girls and I attended here in Georgia for about ten years.

            There are many remembrances of the church we went to. Both the senior pastor and my Sunday school teacher are larger than life, and I still refer to things they said or did that have stuck with me in valuable ways over these many years. But it is the associate pastor, a lovely and shy-with-sermons woman, who made not one, but two statements which have helped comprise my list of philosophies of life.

            One of those statements came from a Christmas sermon – the story of the Magi. How did she even keep our attention that Christmas? She was talking about a story we have heard since the beginning of each of our lives – the story sits in our homes every holiday season – the Three Kings and their accompanying camels and their gifts all squeezed into our nativity scenes. And our brains as we were sitting there in the service – our brains were all clogged with things that need doing, keeping the kids behaving now, what we will do first once we are out of church, and so on the dizzying list continued. How could she have kept our attention?

our Nativity Set

            She might have begun with the chain of events with which we were all familiar, I don't remember, my mind was wandering – the wise men or maybe they were kings or maybe they were just wealthy students maybe there were three maybe more following a star that they believed was going to lead them to a new king. They found the baby and gave him gifts. And an angel told the Magi to return home a different way than the route on which they had come as a means of protecting the baby from others who wanted to know his whereabouts. Yes, we know that story – how was the associate pastor going to grab our attention?

           The Magi not only went home on a road different from the one on which they came, but they themselves were different than when they started. They had seen something special, a promise of the future – how could they have been the same when they got back home? That was the pastor's message for all of us that Christmas – she said go home different than the way you came. Make an effort to see, learn, make a difference each time you go out, be aware of the differences and reflect on them – and definitely travel a different route home.

            Go home different than the way you came. The grammar glitch catches you – and you realize there are two meanings to the statement – and it kind of spurs you on.

Not only is this on my list of words of wisdom – statement number three right after my Dad's two quotes on life, but it has become a kind of mission statement for me as a storyteller as well – to tellers and listeners alike, go home different than the way you came!

356 20151222 Go Home Different